Teaching
Graduate Supervision
I supervise MA and PhD students in Political Science in Canadian politics and comparative public policy. I am interested in supervising students who intend to study comparative federalism, social policy, Indigenous-state relations, among other areas.
Undergraduate Courses Taught
POLSCI2UO3: Public Policy and Administration is a second-year course where students are introduced to major issues in Canadian public policy and public administration, including the relationship between politics and public policy making. Students examine how and why governments make the decisions that they do, paying attention to the links between the political environment, the process of agenda-setting, political decision-making (as compared to policy decision-making), and the political, institutional, and ideational factors affecting policy outcomes.
POLSCI4CA3: Topics in Canadian Politics: The Role of Ideas in Uncertain Times is a fourth year seminar course that explores historical and contemporary periods of uncertainty to probe the role that ideas have played in shaping Canadian politics and society. Periods of radical uncertainty – such as financial crises, civil unrest, war, and global pandemics – draw renewed attention to societal gaps, destabilize interest groups, and undermine institutions. During such periods, we can better explore the causal impact of ideas on policy outcomes. The course itself is centered around several key questions to drive discussion and inquiry: How and when do ideas have impact? What happens when ideas interact with existing interests and institutions? How do ideas get transformed, taken up, and embedded? And what makes an idea “good”?
Graduate Courses Taught
POLSCI 732: Laboratories of Democracy? Public Policy in Canada and other Federal Systems is a graduate level course where students examines the political dynamics and public policy making within federal systems. The course examine federalism through two main theoretical lenses: (1) theories about federal systems and federal political dynamics, and (2) the relationship between federalism and public policy. The course touches on theories of federalism as “peace preserving”; the evolution of multilevel governance as it relates to the EU and Indigenous multilevel governance; the theorized link between federalism and policy innovativeness; the strategic behaviour of political actors in federal systems and impacts on public policy; and the distributional implications of federal systems on citizens, among other topics.
PUBPOL701: Public Policy Foundations I: Legislative, Regulatory and Judicial Dynamics is a graduate level course in the Master of Public Policy and Digital Society (MPP-DS) program. The course is intended to provide foundational knowledge of the institutional frameworks and mechanics of governance at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels in Canada. It aims to develop both a theoretical and a practical understanding of how public policy is made, implemented and evaluated, across a broad range of policy issues and including how this has and may relate to an increasingly digital world.
